Entre les murs (The Class)

Entre les murs is the 2008 Palm d'Or Award, directed by Laurent Cantet and based on the novel Entre les murs by Francois Begaudeau.

Begaudeau appears as a version of himself, Monsieur Marin, dealing with a rowdy class in the suburbs of Paris over the academic year. Marin is a French teacher, and his class are 14-15 year olds from various countries across the world.

The film particuarly focuses on Marin's relationship with Khoumba (Rachel Regulier), Esmerelda (Esmerelda Ouertani) and Souleymane (Franck Keita). Khoumba has apparently undergone a great change in the summer, changing from an apparently happy student to one who is constantly confrontational, Esmerelda is very clever-it is revealed she has read The Republic by Plato-but doesn't have the right attitude within the classroom and Souleymane who shuts out anything that doesn't interest him.

Marin's teaching style is not really conventional, he attempts to get the students reading The Diary of Anne Frank but this fails, so he then asks them to write their own self-portraits, in order for both him and the rest of the class to learn more about each other. Through this exercise we learn more about Carl (Carl Nanor) who was expelled from his last school and Wei (Wei Huang) a Chinese immigrant.

Within Entre les murs, issues such as immigration and discipline are discussed. The issue of culture clashes is dealt with via having the children deal with religion, deportation and even cultural indentity-explored by the many boys of African descent arguing over what football team they should support. There are numerous discussions between the teachers about discipline, especially after a controversial incident ends with a student going before a disciplinary panel and ultimatly being excluded.

I watched Entre les murs as preperation for studying Paris and immigration next year in French, and it was interesting to see the ideas being discussed on film. That being said, it wasn't the most riveting film in the world-getting interesting only in its final movements.